


Assassin's Aquaintance

by cecilantro



Series: Somebody Else - Altiria AU [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: First Meeting, prison break - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26666374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: The first time that Vahn meets Grin, it's in prison.(Shortish oneshot about meeting a character from "book 2")
Series: Somebody Else - Altiria AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845454





	Assassin's Aquaintance

When the law finally caught up with Vahn- for the first time, at least- it was over something completely ridiculous. He was unrecognisable as Alsiurian’s bounty at the time, and even so, he was a good thirty miles out from the last time he’d heard whispers of being wanted.

He thinks he’s gotten away with it, as he’s scaling a wall away from the market stall he’s just pulled thirty gold and a loaf of bread from.

_'Duck left!'_ Jester’s voice reverberates, and Vahn doesn’t question, he just does. A crossbow bolt whistles over his right shoulder, and he curses, abandoning the wall and dropping down to begin a mad dash through the streets of this little town.

There’s two on his tail, one with a whistle, one with a crossbow. Vahn’s hands dance over his gun, but he doesn’t want to kill people just doing their jobs. He doesn’t want to shed any more unnecessary blood.

He turns down an alley and curses loudly in primordial orcish at the dead end. He barely has the processing time to jam his gun into his endless satchel and tighten the strings, spitting the command word to lock the thing, before a crossbow bolt strikes one shoulder.  
He looks up to the line of guards- six or seven, now- before one steps forward. No crossbow, but hands blazing with dusky pink, they lift a hand toward him and drag down in the air.

Vahn recognises Jester’s voice in those last split-seconds of consciousness,

_'It’s okay! It’s okay, I’ll- I’ll figure this out.'_

And then nothing. Black.

  
  
  


He wakes an unknown amount of hours later in a cell. It swims into view around him, he’s facing outward to the hall between cell bars. He has a heavy stone of dread in his stomach as he tries jerking his wrists down and finds there is very little give. His ankles, when he kicks, feels much the same. He glances, only able to move his head.  
They must have recognised him as a Cryptic Eye, not that it’s particularly hard if you get up close. These are restraints he recognises, though not ones he’s ever been in before. He’s only seen them used against people, and when they were, it wasn’t pretty.

But he isn’t dead yet, and these cells are far too dingy to be Alsiurian’s, so he’s fairly certain they don’t know who he is.

He’s spread out, starfish, against the wall. The bindings on his shoulders and chest are regular bars, keeping him pinned and taking some of his weight. His hips are similarly bound, thick iron tight against his body, pushing him into the wall so that he cannot move at all. There are bands around his upper thighs, so that he cannot get even a tiny amount of space- and the reason for that is the hole his tail is threaded through. It’s really quite ingenious, he’s seen more than one hellborn that can pick locks with their tail. Vahn isn’t quite that skilled, but he understands why they take no risks.  
His wrists and ankles are bound so that, if he were to shapeshift to make himself smaller, slimmer, thinner, the manacles would simply tighten. There is some kind of elastic tension _inside_ the wall he’s bound to. He cannot enlarge himself, buff himself, without the manacles being too tight. And in iron versus flesh, of course the iron will win out.

He hangs his head. There is nothing he can do. He doesn’t know how to do magic, and Jester’s capabilities are limited by Vahn’s own physical form.

Well, at least they didn’t remove his gloves. The endless satchel is gone though.

 _'I’ll figure something out.'_ Jester promises in his head, and Vahn sighs. The entire right side of his face hurts, and the wound where the crossbow bolt had struck is still smarting. A brief glance tells him it’s been barely two hours since it was inflicted, the blood has dried but not crusted. His shirt is ruined.

Ah well.

_'Sleep,'_ Jester insists, _'I’ll wake you if anything happens. You need to recover.'_

“Right.” Vahn murmurs, closing his eyes. He trusts Jester completely, and even though there’s severe discomfort from literally hanging off a wall, it’s not the worst thing he’s ever felt. Eventually, he manages to fall into a light, restless sleep.

Jester settles on the floor just to Vahn’s side, knowing he’s invisible to all others. Kellie is not here, so she can’t give him away, but he does miss her terribly. Vahn has that worse than he does, though.

He hears when Vahn crosses that final gap into sleep, restless though it is. He rises then, to inspect over his host’s body.  
Vahn has a terrible blossoming black eye, they had not been gentle in his apprehension after they’d magically knocked him out. The wound in his shoulder was bandaged for a time, not skillfully, but enough so that he did not bleed out, and that it would not re-open when being strained over the manacles and bindings.  
Other than that, he’s fairly unharmed. They hadn’t stripped him, which is definitely a positive- they’re completely unaware of his ritual scars and his hand, believing him to be non-magical… which isn’t _inaccurate,_ but may come in helpful later.  
There really is nothing that Jester can do. There’s no electricity here, technology too many centuries out, everything is out of his range of skill. He can only sit and wait and hope an opportunity presents itself.

  
  


Days pass. One day. Two. They feed him occasionally, and Vahn does not argue. There’s paperwork they’re working through, he gives them the name _Corvis Mordant_ , and they begin their background check. They won’t find anything, of course.  
Time is trickling between their fingers before Alsiurian’s bounty catches up to this town. When Jester is sure there are no guards, he talks with Vahn, just to keep him awake. He’s working on it. He’s thinking. He doesn’t admit that it’s hopeless without change.  
But he’s seen Vahn and Carver in his visions, he’s seen them hand-in-hand to rescue the world from the threatening void. And he’s seen Vahn’s death, too, and it was not in this place. Something will happen. Something has to change here.

On the third day, Jester is half-sleeping against Vahn’s ankle manacles. He doesn’t need sleep, but the exhaustion of being here is weighing on Vahn, and in turn, on Jester. There have been three other prisoners carried through in those days past, but nothing of particular interest. A town drunk, a pickpocket, and a goblin man aggressively protesting his innocence. 

And then something floats through the bars of the cage.

Jester perks up, shake’s at Vahn’s leg. He feels it as static, but it rouses him regardless,

“What is it?”

_'Letter,'_ Jester replies, shifting over to read it,

_Aoibheann Eílish-_

_We have heard whispers of your skills. Both in creation, and in destruction._

_Put simply, your skills are of use to us and ours. Our organisation is interested in employing and training your abilities._

_If you are interested, all you need do is slip this letter through the bars of your cell and set it alight. We will come for you._

_Swift justice,_

_Ô'ayli's-perla_

  
  
  


“I don’t have the ability to do either of those things,” Vahn says bitterly, “But if they could get me out of here, I’d do anything they asked.”

_'Be careful with that thought process.'_ Jester warns, frowning, _'I can get both of those things done, but it’ll drain you.'_

“Fuck it,” Vahn swallows, “Anything. Do it.”

_'Are you sure?'_

“Anything is better than waiting here for Alsiurian to find me.”

Jester doesn’t try arguing further. He slips back across the room to Vahn’s side and takes a breath he doesn’t need.  
He slips into Vahn’s skin and blinks, red glows from their eyes as they clarify. A grimace twists Vahn’s face in Jester’s mood, he’d forgotten how much _worse_ living people’s darkvision is compared to his own.  
It takes him a moment to locate the letter on the floor. It’s not terribly far from the bars, but any amount of magic expended will be exponentially magnified both by Jester’s drain, and Vahn’s inexperience. But needs must.  
Jester shifts Vahn’s fingers, red spilling up them and swirling as a weak breeze around his hand, pushing out toward the letter.  
It scoots under the bars, and Jester feels Vahn’s surprise and reserved joy. He doesn’t want to celebrate just yet. Jester gets that.

“ _This is probably going to knock you out,_ ” Jester says in Vahn’s voice, and receives a reply in the same shared breath; “Just do it.”

Jester rubs their fingers together, just a short scrub. Static builds, and he prays his aim is true.  
He points.  
A teensy, tiny jet of red lightning bolts out of his finger, skims under the bars, and strikes true on the centre of the letter. It erupts into flames immediately, and as soon as it does, Jester feels himself ejected from Vahn’s skin as the hellborn passes out.

There is a sigh from Jester, completely soundless even to himself, and he pats Vahn’s head. Or makes the motion of, as his hand phases right through, but the emotion is conveyed.

This is all. Something will happen now, Jester is sure of it. 

He settles back against the wall and waits.

  
  


The night- or presumably the night- drags by slowly. Nothing happens, past the routine guard patrol. Jester glowers at them. They don’t even glance into Vahn’s cell.

It’s what Jester assumes to be very early the next morning when the sound of scuffling reaches them. Jester awakens Vahn as he heads to the bars to peek through, staring up the corridor to the source of the noise. There’s the heavy pulse of magic and crackling of fire, guard commands to move in formation, and then they round a corner, engaged in magical combat with a boy barely Vahn’s age, red-haired and weilding fire like sword and shield. He makes a heavy thrust, and the guard at the head drops like a sack of potatoes, flames licking up his torso.  
That seems to have made an opening, though, as one guard behind the head manages to round a kick up and into the newcomer’s ribs, breaking his focus and making the fire sputter out as he stumbles into a wall.

They’re almost at the cell when the guards manage to overpower the stranger, sending him sprawling face-first to the floor, his face scraping across the rough stone.

Vahn stares, horrified, but the stranger’s expression never changes. When he hits the floor, he is _grinning_ , somewhat manic and too-bright, even as he’s crushed into solid rock. There’s a brief flicker of pain across his face when one guard drops to plant their knee between his shoulder blades, whole weight on his back to pin him to the floor.

The newcomer glances into the cell, meets Vahn’s eyes for nothing more than a moment.  
  


He winks.

  
And then flame licks up and around him as he turns his attention away from Vahn, and back to the assault he’s under, all without breaking that same, too-wide, terrifying bright grin.  
The guard on his back screams around a bitten tongue as the flame begins to melt into his flesh, but his training does not allow him to lighten his weight.  
  
Another guard drops down and plunges their hands into the fire surrounding the stranger’s arms, wincing as they wrench them back. Something pops in the stranger’s shoulder, and even Vahn winces at the noise, but he does not break that smile for even a second. The pain only seems to fuel the flames, they rage across his whole body, creating a blazing corona of firelight in the hallway and filling it with screams and the sound of charred flesh-

And then it’s gone.

The guard that was previously astride the stranger’s back collapses aside, there is no saving him now. The last breath leaves his lungs, and the stranger’s grin does not falter despite the antimagic manacles they have finally managed to clasp onto his wrists.

The second guard steps back, relenting control to another, far less injured guard. Their hands and forearms are burnt and blackened, looking more like charcoal than flesh, but they are alive. That’s more than can be said for their coworker.

“Bastard.” Vahn hears the unharmed guard hiss as she grabs the manacles and the back of the stranger’s coat, lifting him a half-foot before _slamming_ his head back into the stone. And again. And again.

Until the grin drops away and so does his resistance, fading out with his disappearing consciousness. The guard glances into the cell opposite Vahn’s and finds it empty, kicks the gate open and tosses the unconscious boy in with little care. Vahn and Jester can see that stranger has blood trickling from the whole right side of his face where he’d been scraped and smashed into stone, and burn marks curl across all exposed skin.

  
The guards carelly pick up the charcoaled body of the dead guard, and trembling, they retreat back up the hall.

As soon as they’re gone, Vahn strains against his restraints despite knowing how fruitless it is.

“Jester,” He says into the air, “Is he alive?” 

Jester glances at Vahn, knowing the hellborn doesn’t see the look of concern he gives. They’ve just watched this boy kill a man in a _vicious_ way, and permanently ruin another’s life. But Vahn holds no love for the guards, so he supposes it makes sense.

Jester skims across the hall, pulling the bond between himself and Vahn as far as he possibly can. It’s not terribly far, no more than thirty feet, so he can’t quite get right up to their fiery new friend, but he can get close enough to see.

_'He’s alive, and should be fine. A concussion, maybe. Probably. No terrible blood loss, and it doesn’t look like his skull is broken.'_

“Good.” Vahn breathes a sigh of relief, and Jester slips back to him, knowing the two of them are both feeling that pain of the pull when they’re separated.

_'Back to sleep,'_ Jester assures, ' _I’ll wake you when he does.'_

“Alright.” Vahn knows better than to argue. He relaxes in his bonds and silence grips as he forces himself back to sleep. Jester sits in the hallway, not far enough to pull on the tether between himself and Vahn, but enough so that he can watch the stranger rest.

The morning patrol comes and goes, with little more than a scathing glare in the stranger’s direction. Then the midday patrol. Finally, somewhere between the midday and afternoon patrols, the stranger stirs.  
Jester doesn’t wake Vahn right away. Rather, he waits as the stranger gathers his bearings.

He first sits up, looks around with that same grin on his face, and only when he sees nobody does he let it drop to something of a frown.

He lifts his hands to run one over the right side of his face, wincing with the pain of the scrapes. He presses gently at the spot where his head had hit the stone multiple times, and a hiss escapes him.

“Well, this went well.” Jester hears him complain into the empty air, and then he makes his way over to the bars. Jester scrambles back to Vahn to wake him, but gets there about the same time as the stranger plasters his smile back on his face and calls in a whisper-shout,

“Hey! You with the horns!”

Vahn stirs awake, eyes flashing open. Jester stays quiet, but makes his presence known in the static feeling on Vahn’s shoulder, a hand of reassurance.

“You’re okay,” is the first thing Vahn says, “How’s your head?”

“What?” This seems to genuinely surprise the stranger, “Oh. I’m fine. Business as usual. Can you do magic?”

There’s a few moments of silence as Vahn processes this strange, rapid progression of conversation. He frowns a little.

“No, I can’t do magic. I just use guns, but they took those. No magic.”

“Sure you can,” The stranger dismisses the point out of hand, waving his own bound wrists airily, “Everyone can do magic.”

“Not me.”  
  


“Yeah, you can.” The stranger’s smile is ever-present, and Vahn can’t decide if it’s reassuring or obnoxious or both. He frowns deeper anyway.  
  


“Whatever. I don’t see how that matters- anyway, what’s your name?”

  
There is a small pause here,

“Jonathan,” says the stranger eventually.  
  


“How’s Jon?”  
  


“Just- no. Just use Grin. God. No.”

Vahn chuckles at that, and Jester watches the stranger’s pose soften just a little, almost like relief.

“Aoibheann. Or just Vahn, Aoibheann is… it’s from primordial orcish, so it can be hard to spell.”

Grin leans up against the bars, musing for a few moments,  
“A-O-I-B-H-E-A-N?” He spells the letters out, and Jester’s eyes narrow. Vahn does not seem to clock on to the unusual knowing, rather, he brightens,

  
“Two N’s,” he says, “But yes.”

Jester shifts slightly closer to Vahn. He knows that Grin could spell that, that he already knew, not just the spelling but _Vahn_ in general. He knows who Vahn is.  
He keeps his mouth closed.

  
“Vahn,” says Grin, slowly, as though considering the name, “Well. You don’t have antimagic on there, do you?”  
  


“No, like I said,” Vahn tugs at the binding, “No magic.”  
  


“Everyone can do magic, Vahn. You just have to learn how.” He’s back at the bars, pressing in close, “I can teach you. We can get out of here.”

Jester opens his mouth to advise and protest, but Vahn has already answered,

“Yes. Please.”

Jester closes his mouth.

If it gets Vahn out of here, he supposes, it’s the best they can do. But he decides he’s going to be keeping a _very_ close eye on Grin. He doesn’t trust him, not in the slightest.

  
  
  


Grin spends the next couple of hours explaining the very basics of telekinesis to Vahn. The act of moving something with your mind, of willing it as though a spectral hand is holding it.

Within three or so hours, Vahn has managed to quest out with his magic- magic he had _no idea that he had_ \- and he ruffles Grin’s hair. This elicits a brief laugh from Grin that seems to be just a touch too genuine for his own comfort, as he bites it off roughly before it can begin to echo. 

“You’re a very fast learner.” He compliments instead, and Vahn grins back in return,

“I try very hard.”

“Do you think you’d be up to a little thievery?”

That stops Vahn’s thoughts and laughter in its tracks. It’s not like he’s against the concept of stealing- it’s why he’s in this cell in the first place- but _telekinetically_ stealing, with so much riding on his success?

_'Don’t forget to breathe.'_ Jester has to remind him as his lungs struggle against the rising panic. Vahn forces himself to take in air. Grin is still waiting for a reply.

There is trickles of silence, in which Grin does not move, the smile does not falter. Jester doesn’t even think he blinks.

“I can try.” Vahn says eventually, “But if I fuck it up, we’re both doomed.”  
  


“That’s the spirit!” Grin replies jovially, and they begin to dive into Grin’s plan for how to get them the fuck out of this shitty little prison with its shitty charcoaled guards.

  
  
  


They don’t wait long. Grin suggests extra time, extra practice, another day. Vahn is the one to insist they do this on the night patrol. Every second is precious, every moment that trickles past is a moment closer to Vahn’s identity being discovered. He might not be ready, but he _has_ to be.

“They’re coming.” Vahn whispers into the still air between his cell and Grin’s, relaying Jester’s message. Jester shifts back to Vahn’s side for emotional support, and Grin sidles up to the bars. The guard begins their pass through the cells.

“Hey,” Grin, smile firmly in place and tinged with smug vindictiveness, “How’s your friend? Not the one with the stumps- the one I cooked to perfection. I like my pigs _roasted._ ”

It has the exact effect they assumed it would, the guard presses up against the bars to Grin’s cell and she grabs him by the collar. His refusal to wipe that smug fucking smile off his face only enrages the guard further.  
With the guard distracted, Vahn quests out with his brand new magic, and rimes the ring of keys in cobalt blue. The glow is dim, but present, and _Gods above,_ he hopes Grin is infuriating enough to keep their attention.  
He presses all of the keys together tightly, terrified that they may rattle, and shifts part of his focus to the tiny clasp that holds them on her belt. He misses the first time. Gets into it the second, feeling sweat gently drip down his brow with the focus.  
Grin is still speaking. He says something else about roast pork, and Vahn gets the clasp open. He pulls the keys away, and in that moment, he notices the flash of a blade from the guard’s side-

Grin’s tirade of horrible teasing halts with a jolt and a groan as the blade sinks into the soft part of his torso, not quite through his stomach by the looks of the angle, but deep regardless. Vahn feels dread rise like bile in his stomach. The shortswords are _nasty,_ and he’s sure it’s gone all the way through his new ally, as it’s buried to the hilt in his skin. The guard pulls back, and Grin begins a softer, weaker deluge as Vahn, despite his horror, pulls the keys through the bars of his cell and sets them gently in the corner to hide.

The guard throws Grin back from the bars and turns to march on, the stomping of their boots growing quieter and more distant as they move. When they are far enough away, Vahn strains out again,

“Grin? Shit, fuck- are you- alive?” He cuts off the word _okay_ before he can be completely stupid. There’s a chuckle from the other cell, more bubbly than it should be.

  
“Alive is debatable. Did you get the keys?”  
  


“Yeah- yeah, I got ‘em.”

  
“Then let’s get the fuck out of here before I bleed out.” Grin is back at the bars on his knees, blood oozing sluggishly through his clothes. He observes his own wound for a moment, and makes a keening noise of disappointment, “Aww… I liked this shirt.”

Vahn is too focused on pulling the keys up from the corner of the cell to think too hard on how ridiculous that sentence is. He begins trying the keys one at a time in his right hand cuff, and it’s no fast feat. There’s a good twenty or so on this ring.

It’s roughly the seventh key he tries that finally makes that little _click_ noise that makes Vahn tear up in complete joy. The cuff springs open, and he pulls his right hand away from the wall for the first time in _days_ . He tries the same key on his left, telekinetically where he can’t quite reach yet, and it _works._

The other bindings follow swiftly. He gets the ones around his upper arms first, then his chest, his hips- here, he begins to suffer the effects of no longer being held against the wall by iron bars, doubled over painfully, so he gets his ankles before his thighs.  
With those last two _clicks,_ Vahn peels away from the wall and hits the floor on hands and knees, the clatter of keys on stone nearly making him sob. Everything feels weak and shaky, despite Jester’s litany of support in the back of his brain. He knows they don’t have a lot of time before the guard realises, and likely less before Grin falls unconscious.

“You still awake?” Vahn asks, struggling to pull himself to his feet. There’s a pause before Grin replies,

  
“Yeah, I’m up. Good job.” But it doesn’t have nearly enough of the bubble of faux-joy, the smugness, anything. It’s tired, distant, and Vahn feels panic bubble up in himself. He’s at the door to his cell in moments, fiddling through keys and trying each of them in turn,  
  


“I’m coming, hold on.”  
  


“I’m fine, take your time.” Grin replies, and Vahn doesn’t believe him for a moment. It takes too long, a couple of minutes, to get through his lock, and then he’s at Grin’s cell. Another minute or two passes before he finds the key and pushes in, the door scraping on the stone as he drops to Grin’s side.  
Grin still has that smile, the wide one, the manic one, but it’s tinged with exhaustion from blood loss. Vahn kneels beside him,

“Hi,” he says, quietly, taking Grin’s bound wrists in one hand so he can begin trying keys, “Nice to meet you.”  
  


“And you, Aoibheann.” Grin meets his eyes only briefly before the both of them focus on the manacles.  
  


“When you’re out of these,” Vahn is on the third key, “Can you heal yourself?”  
  


“I can cauterize them. That’ll do.” Grin gives a rumble of a chuckle that doesn’t sound quite right. He’s beginning to slump, now. Seventh key.  
  


“Hey,” Vahn shoulders him, “Stay with me,”  
  


“I’m _fine,_ it’s just the shirt!” Grin says, and promptly loses consciousness.  
He slumps forward against Vahn’s shoulder, and Vahn grimaces, begins working through the keys faster. The panic bubbles in the back of his throat, but he can’t afford to risk letting it take over. Thirteenth key. The lock on the antimagic manacles pop, and Vahn tears them off of Grin’s wrists before standing, dragging the unconscious boy up behind him,

“Jester. How do I get to the satchel, and then how do I get out?”

 _  
'There’s no way you can get by the guards whilst carrying him.'_ Jester replies, reluctant and regretful. Vahn pulls Grin’s unconscious, sluggishly bleeding form a little closer.

  
“Well, I’m not leaving him. He’s the reason I have a chance.”

There are a few long seconds. Jester knows this is basically suicide. There’s no way Vahn, unskilled as he is right now, can get through the guards with Grin unconscious.

_'Vahn,'_ Jester says,  
  


“I’m _not_ leaving him,” Vahn warns,  
  


_'I’m not suggesting you do. I know you won’t. Put your hand over the stab wound.'_

  
Vahn, confused, does as he’s asked. “Okay?”  
  


_'You know how to push out with your magic? Do that. Focus on healing. On closing. On finding the apex and sewing the rift back together. Don’t be afraid when you can feel his organs.'_

“ _What_?” Vahn says, but closes his eyes and does as he’s told anyway. He pushes out, coursing cobalt down his arm and hand and radiating it into Grin’s body. In that moment he understands, as the ripples of light spread through the wound and outward, and Vahn can feel and understand Grin’s body on an uncomfortably intimate level. To the point where he recognises that the poor guy is _really_ close to developing kidney stones. If they survive this, Vahn makes a note to mention it to him.

The gap between layers of flesh and muscle where the sword had penetrated must be miniscule in reality, as the two sides press together and leak blood. But in this magical haze, Vahn feels it like a giant rift, a ravine a half-mile wide that seems, at first, completely unbridgeable. But as Vahn focuses on what Jester said, on healing, closing, sewing the rift- he feels strings of muscles and vessels begin to snake out across the gap and knit together, pulling the sides back. The blood seeps back into place, the heavy broken veins repairing themselves under his concentration. The arm around Grin tightens unconsciously, and he pushes just a fraction harder.  
  


“Come on,” It’s a soft murmur, “Wake up.”  
  


Cobalt spills out of the wound and across, Jester watches with pride as Vahn takes to healing as a duck to water. He always knew his friend’s skills of restoration would match or even outstrip his penchant for destruction. This isn’t the ideal way to confirm that theory, but well- whatever works. 

Grin stirs.

Vahn pulls his hand back, cobalt light dissipating into the darkness as he shifts instead to pushing Grin back from his shoulder instead, watching his face as it twists with pain for a moment, then his eyes blink open. The whole right side of his face is still scraped to shit, scabbed over, and the hair on that side of his head is matted with blood. But he’s awake.

“Can you stand?” Vahn asks, and Grin finds his feet, shaking away a little from Vahn,

  
“I’m good.”

Vahn squints at him in disbelief.

“I’ll manage.” Grin corrects himself. Lying about this now would only make the hellborn argue, and they do not have the time for Vahn’s stubborn bullshit. Vahn nods, and turns for the door of the cell,

  
“Let’s get my satchel and get out of here.” 

Grin doesn’t reply, just plasters that smile back on and follows him out, following Jester’s directions.

  
  
  


When they burst out of the door to the prison, Grin is in the lead. He has a tight hold of Vahn’s wrist as he drags them through the streets, his rattling laugh echoing off of the walls as they go. Vahn struggles with his gun for just a moment before he finds his footing and spins the revolver barrel of his pet project to a yellow crystal, glittering and glowing in the midnight shadow. The guards round the corner behind them, and Vahn aims the gun.

  
There’s a faint, whining _boom_ as the bullet blasts out of the gun, and a smash-crash as it shatters the cobbles five feet in front of the crowd of guards and blasts outward in a pyre of yellow light that fades out to reveal a thick web of thorny vines, spread between walls like a net, preventing the guards from moving any further.

“Good job,” Grin calls over his shoulder, grip tightening on Vahn’s wrist, “ _Run._ ”

Vahn does simply as he’s told, following Grin as he springs between walls and cat jumps out to catch the edge of the roof, yanking himself up. He reaches over the edge and hauls Vahn up behind him, and then they’re taking off across the rooftops and out of the town, toward the forest on the edge.

They spill into the woods, and only then do they slow and slow, and stop.

They’re amongst trees, towering over them and blotting out half the moonlight, scattering the other half in little spots of pale desaturation across the duo, the ground, the leaves.

Grin has red hair. Now that they’re in some kind of light, Vahn can see the colors around him. He’d missed color.  
Grin stretches luxuriously, almost like a cat, grinning out at the freedom around him before turning back to Vahn,

“Well, that went _perfectly._ ” He says, jovial, and then follows it with an _oomph_ as Vahn thumps into him with a massive, tight hug. There’s a brief moment of surprise before he reciprocates, not quite as desperately tight, but seeming genuine enough to satisfy Vahn at least.  
  


“Thank you,” Vahn says, muffled into the fur of Grin’s coat, “ _Gods,_ I would have been screwed without you.”  
  


“Hey, no problem. I appreciate the healing. Good job, by the way.”  
  


“Thanks,” Vahn finally peels himself away, steps back. It’s been… a while, he realises, since he last hugged somebody. Even before Siarl. Even before leaving. It’s been so long since he saw Cal and Corona.  
  


“Swift justice,” Grin says, and that drives lightning down Vahn’s spine, his head whips around to him again, “The Ô'ayli's-perla welcomes you, Aoibheann Eílish.”

Somehow, this relaxes Jester. Vahn hears the roll of his best friend’s laughter in his mind,

_'Oh, that’s so much better than I expected.'_ He says through chuckles, ' _No less dangerous, but still better.'_

“Ready to come back for training?” Grin, smiling as always, extends a hand toward Vahn. And, well, he has nothing else to lose.

He takes it. A flash crosses his vision, a flash of the future ahead of him in that grip. Of hours spent with Grin, shooting at targets and learning to sneak, of holding blazing fire between the two of them. Of evenings spent lounging together trading tales of the day, animated between storytelling and one or both of them laughing brightly.   
Normalcy, or as close to it as Vahn will ever have, has taken hold of him here. Something and someone solid and reliable- considering- to stick with him for years to come. Even if he cannot and will never be able to trust Grin, he will still be there.

“Sure,” Vahn smiles back at him, “Let’s go.”


End file.
